Clavius is sent by Pilate to "expedite" a crucifixion in process - including the crucifixion of a controversial Jewish preacher and teacher, "Yeshua" (Cliff Curtis). Used to killing in battle himself, Clavius has no compunctions about ordering a soldier to drive a lance into Yeshua's side. Unusually for him, though, Clavius takes time to gaze upon the face of the dead man.
Accompanied by his loyal aide Lucius (Tom Felton) and a group of soldiers, Clavius digs up dead body after dead body; no luck. They interrogate some of Yeshua's followers, who seem to spout unintelligible nonsense - especially Bartholomew. Next they enter a Jewish enclave, where Clavius and his men break down door after door, searching for Jesus' followers.
Finally Clavius breaks down one door and stops, stunned, transfixed, stupefied. There, sitting surrounded by his followers, in the midst of a meal, sits the dead man, smiling, laughing. How can this be? The rational Tribune cannot make sense of what is happening.
He had looked upon the face of a man who was dead on a cross.
Now he looks into the eyes of a man very much alive.
For haunting moments, Clavius stands poised on the door's threshold.
Or - do we? How REAL is Jesus to us anyway? Has the Gospel story become rote and boring to us by this stage of our lives? Are we really, at heart, another Clavius on the threshold? Do we relegate Jesus to those Gospel stories that happened BACK THEN? Do we believe Jesus' words as he rises into Heaven, to His Father, are also for us? "And I am with you always, until the end of time"? Or, if someone were to tell us that Jesus lives and speaks to us in the depths of our hearts TODAY would we be Clavius on the threshold, stunned to think that a dead man is really alive? Would we shake our heads, and say to ourselves, like Clavius, "How can this be? How can a dead man be alive - here, now, in this place, in my life? It would be better for me to leave him safely back dead on the cross and far away from me!"
Yes, it's certainly easier to leave Jesus back on his cross and safely out of our lives. Especially if, like Clavius on the threshold, we tend to be Pilate's right hand man, a follower of authority/society and anxious not to rock the boat.
Dorothy Sayers (1893 - 1957) was a renowned English crime writer, the first woman to write murder mysteries. Her charming hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocrat and an amateur sleuth, is beloved around the world and has been portrayed in film and on tv by many actors. But, she was also the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and a successful lay theologian. Infuriated by many of the clergy of her day who were called "courageous" for denying the Resurrection of Jesus the Christ, and frustrated by the lukewarm Christians around her who found Church attendance, the following of Jesus, and understanding Church teachings unimportant and boring, she took up her pen to defend her faith - and to proclaim that God is a Tiger, that God becoming human, dying for us, and rising from the dead is the most riveting drama in our lives.
But it wasn't only the drama of Jesus the God-Man's death and resurrection that riveted her. She was passionate about Jesus' life as well, what his words and actions revealed about who he was. She wrote,
"We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him “meek and mild,” and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies. To those who knew him, however, he in no way suggested a milk-and-water person; they objected to him as a dangerous firebrand. True, he was tender to the unfortunate, patient with honest inquirers, and humble before heaven; but he insulted respectable clergymen by calling them hypocrites; he referred to King Herod as “that fox”; he went to parties in disreputable company and was looked upon as a “gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners”; he assaulted indignant tradesmen and threw them and their belongings out of the Temple; he drove a coach-and-horses through a number of sacrosanct and hoary regulations; he cured diseases by any means that came handy, with a shocking casualness in the matter of other people’s pigs and property; he showed no proper deference for wealth or social position; when confronted with neat dialectical traps, he displayed a paradoxical humor that affronted serious-minded people, and he retorted by asking disagreeably searching questions that could not be answered by rule of thumb. He was emphatically not a dull man in his human lifetime, and if he was God, there can be nothing dull about God either."
This is the Jesus who, in today's Gospel, the guards cannot bring themselves to arrest. They tell their enraged bosses that "Never before has anyone spoken like this man." Why? For two reasons:
First, Jesus' words have ultimate authority because he lives in his own life what he teaches and preaches to others, and he tells them that he does not speak his own words - he speaks the Words of his Heavenly Father. In his words and actions we discover Who God is. In fact, Jesus says "The Father and I are One." No one else has ever so identified himself with God. And so Who is God as Jesus reveals him? Tender. Patient. Humble. Compassionate. Merciful. Fearless. Angry at injustice and Passionate for Justice for the oppressed and abused. Healer. Forgiver of Sins. One Who disregards petty legalities to approach the hearts of sinners - anywhere and everywhere. One who is uncompromising Truth, Who calls out power and demands aid for the powerless.
One whom the fearful, the ambitious, and those who worship power would rather leave dead on the cross.
Second, as Fr. Anthony Giambrone, O.P. tells us, "Many insist that we are deceived to say that no one has ever spoken like Jesus. Yet no politicians, artists, authors, gurus, or life coaches can infallibly accomplish what they promise. The words of other men can fail to achieve their purpose. Only Jesus has the words that overrule every principality and power which tries to command us. Only he is the Word who spoke in the beginning and it was made." (March 17 in the "Magnificat Lenten Companion.")
What did Jesus cry out that the Temple guards overheard, that made them not arrest him, subjecting themselves to the Pharisees' ridicule?
"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me;
Let him drink who believes in me.
Scripture has it,
'From within him rivers of living water shall flow.'"
And later in his resurrected life, as he rises back to his Father in heaven, The Word of God says these words:
"GO therefore and make disciples of all the nations....and know that I am with you always, until the end of the world."
Clavius stands stunned, looking into the eyes of the man who was dead and is now alive. What will he do?
Behind him is life as he has known it - all his predictable goals, his path to eventual power and prestige in Rome as the right hand man of Pilate.
Before him is - What? Life with a totally unpredictable man risen from the dead who paid the ultimate price for his uncompromising integrity, who promises nothing other than that his followers in believing in him will face frightening unpredictability, alienation from the part of society which is merciless, full of lies, and ambitious, - and even death. Yet as he observes Yeshua talk with his loving disciples, he can see that the followers of Yeshua also experience unparalleled companionship with one another, and the glory and joy of God's healing and freeing love, a love which sets them free from sin, free from undue anxiety, and free from being dependent on others' "good opinions."
Clavius now understands what Bartholomew had said to him: "Knowing that Yeshua has risen from the dead, everything changes."
Everything changes now for Clavius. He moves from the threshold forward, and he enters the room where Yeshua awaits him. Clavius will never return to his life as Pilate's right hand man.
This Lent, you and I stand with Clavius on the threshold, but for us it is the threshold of our own hearts. Will we back away, turn around, and continue our lives as we have known them, pretending that Jesus is tucked away safely in the Book of the Gospels, with no earthly relevance to our own hopes, fears, dreams, loves, ambitions, our own playing games with the Pilates of this world, our own sinfulness? Or will we move forward, cross the threshold, and enter the room in our hearts where the Living Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary dwells? What Word, meant for us personally, will Jesus say to us to soften our hardened hearts with his Living Water if only we are willing to listen to him?
Referring to the temple guard who would not arrest Jesus, Fr. Giambrone says,
"What did Jesus say that so arrested the hearts of these soldiers? What word of Truth transformed them into his servants, set free from their former masters?
"In the Gospel of John, this scene belongs to a pattern of encountering Jesus for oneself and being overwhelmed by his presence. We too are invited to hear him speak personally to our hearts and, by his word, to be set free."
Are we ready to cross the threshold into our hearts and find the living God, the Lion of Judah, waiting for us? Are we ready to leave behind our lukewarm selves and become passionate followers of Jesus, open to his voice speaking daily in our hearts? Are we willing to lay down our lives, to teach and preach him, God's Word, in and out of season, when convenient and inconvenient, making disciples of all the nations? Are we willing to cry out "Oh God, You are my God for Whom I seek; for You my body pines and my soul thirsts, like the earth, parched, lifeless, and without water....For your love is better than life..."